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Kellie Lunney

Kellie Lunney covers federal pay and benefits issues, the budget process and financial management. After starting her career in journalism at Government Executive in 2000, she returned in 2008 after four years at sister publication National Journal writing profiles of influential Washingtonians. In 2006, she received a fellowship at the Ohio State University through the Kiplinger Public Affairs in Journalism program, where she worked on a project that looked at rebuilding affordable housing in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She has appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, NPR and Feature Story News, where she participated in a weekly radio roundtable on the 2008 presidential campaign. In the late 1990s, she worked at the Housing and Urban Development Department as a career employee. She is a graduate of Colgate University.

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The House on Monday passed legislation that would give the secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department authority to order employees to repay bonuses. H.R. 280 would require notifying affected employees before they had to repay the money, and would give them an opportunity for a hearing conducted by the secretary. ...

March 2, 2015
This story has been updated. House lawmakers on Monday will introduce legislation to rescind a five-month-old Pentagon policy that reduced per diems for service members and Defense civilian employees on long-term government travel. The bipartisan bill would prohibit the Defense Department from reducing the travel allowances for troops and civilian ...

March 2, 2015
The Thrift Savings Plan rebounded in February, with all but one fund posting positive returns, according to the latest data from the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The S Fund, invested in small and midsize companies, had the best month of the 10 funds, increasing 6.05 percent. The international (I) ...

February 27, 2015
Employees at the Veterans Affairs Department’s regional office in Little Rock, Ark., changed the dates of disability claims in dozens of cases, making it appear that the department was making more progress than it was on eliminating the long-standing backlog, according to a new inspector general report. Staff at the ...

February 26, 2015
The federal agency that provides health care to vets should be turned into a non-profit government corporation that competes with the private sector for patients, according to a veterans’ advocacy group. The conservative-leaning Concerned Veterans of America recommends splitting the Veterans Health Administration into two entities, one that focuses on ...

February 25, 2015
The Coast Guard’s lax oversight of a medical travel program for service members and their families could have wasted taxpayer money, a watchdog concluded. The agency, which is housed in the Homeland Security Department, spent nearly $4.5 million between 2010 and 2014 on medical travel for Coast Guard members and ...

February 24, 2015
The head of the Veterans Affairs Department on Tuesday said he has never misrepresented his military service in his biographical information. A contrite Bob McDonald apologized during a press conference for incorrectly stating that he had served in the Special Forces during a conversation with a homeless veteran in Los ...

February 24, 2015
This story has been updated. Most federal agencies are not making meaningful distinctions in performance ratings and bonuses for senior executives, according to a new watchdog report. About 85 percent of career senior executives received “outstanding” or “exceeds fully successful” ratings in their performance reviews between fiscal years 2010 and ...

February 23, 2015
Federal employees have had a tough time during the past week getting through to Thrift Savings Plan customer service representatives. Snowstorm Octavia – which brought brutal cold and precipitation to the East Coast last week – happened to hit at the same time the TSP experiences its highest call volumes ...

February 20, 2015
Thousands of service members will see less money in their next paycheck because of a processing error at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Members of the military enrolled in the Thrift Savings Plan’s Roth option will have 100 percent of their monthly deduction taken out of their Feb. 27 ...